SEO: update page title schemes

[murtaugh]

From the basecamp post:

• Right now, [page titles are] “[Article Name], an A List Apart article,” but the article titles aren’t always topical • Recommended: “[Article Name], an ALA article about [Tag 1], [Tag 2], and [Tag 3]—is this doable? Many articles have more than 3 tags, but I think a) the first three would be all we add and b) I think some editors are tagging things with too much stuff; I think 3 tags/article should be our typical.

@sarawb: I'm guessing this will require some editorial decision making.

Some questions from me:

1. We don't have tags in the way this is describing, I think, unless you're thinking the existing topics work. Should we add them? We could add a full-featured tags system, or a simple text field just for this purpose. (From an implementation standpoint either of these is easy.)
2. If there are more than 3 tags (or topics), how do we decide which three to feature? If we just show the first three, we're going to be heavily featuring tags/topics from the beginning of the alphabet (or the beginning of whatever sort order we pick).
3. Should this wait until whatever taxonomy work is being planned is done?

[murtaugh]

This should be easy, as long as it doesn't involve installing a new add-on for tags, which, based on our conversation with @sarawb, it won't.

Figuring out how to choose which tags (categories, really) to feature is probably the toughest part.

[sarawb]

Just posted my Taxonomy recommendations to Basecamp.

I definitely want us to move to a max-of-three approach for tagging. What's been happening is a hodgepodge and it's not helpful. I am strongly tempted to go into the archives and untag a ton of stuff.

So, once we move to the new taxonomy and I do a bit of manual cleanup, we should be good to just go with this. If an article has more than 3 tags still, I would just pull the first 3.

[murtaugh]

A question on how we’ll proceed with this: When the new taxonomy is finalized will you want to:

A. re-name existing categories, and delete categories where needed

or

B. create a whole new set of categories, which will require going in and re-tagging everything

B is the cleaner option, but a lot more work.

On Apr 25, 2015, at 11:36 AM, sarawb notifications@github.com wrote:

Just posted my Taxonomy recommendations to Basecamp.

I definitely want us to move to a max-of-three approach for tagging. What's been happening is a hodgepodge and it's not helpful. I am strongly tempted to go into the archives and untag a ton of stuff.

So, once we move to the new taxonomy and I do a bit of manual cleanup, we should be good to just go with this. If an article has more than 3 tags still, I would just pull the first 3.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/alistapart/AListApart/issues/159#issuecomment-96226384.

[sarawb]

If we do B, can we not automatically port things over to the new categories for the topics where we have straightforward rules?

I don't know who will actually be able to go through and retag everything. I am a bit afraid of that being a forever project that never gets done...

[aparkening]

Official new taxonomy list is up in Basecamp: https://happycog.basecamphq.com/projects/12742765-ala-ux-ia-improvements/posts/92461984/comments#comment_317292982

[aparkening]

@murtaugh: As Sara notes in her spreadsheet, please let we'll need to let editors know when this is ready for them to manually review, apply new categories to blog entries, and evaluate content that should/shouldn't be moved (like the Interaction Design label).

[aparkening]

Priorities have shifted here, so I'm bumping this to enhancement.